Mass Effect: The Enemies Behind Us
by BlakDawn
Summary: John 'Jester' James, cloned human and wetwork's agent, most wanted man by the blue suns and soon to be mercenary, this is his life, his story. Unconnected to the ME games, but set in the same universe.


Prologue: the enemies behind us.

John's life had, for the most part, been filled with pain, from his earliest days in some madman's lair blindfolded and deaf, trying to defend against two of the other children armed only with a small knife. He had been in pain, waiting to be in pain or about to cause someone else a lot of pain for the majority of his six years alive.

As he lay in his tiny, cramped bunk he knew that something had to change, he cast his eyes around the room, barely three metres across, trying to work out exactly what needed to be changed, his situation undoubtedly, but to take on an entire facility of blue suns mercenaries? It bordered on madness. In the darkness he might succeed, of course the controls to do that were buried deep in the bowels of the facility, somewhere he had never been, without darkness he would need a miracle and lots of guns.

Outside of his room, he knew there was a single guard on duty round the clock, he was armed with a tempest SMG and predator heavy pistol, he wore only light armour but it was reasoned that they weren't trained soldiers or biotically capable. Unfortunately for them he was a trained soldier and had been for nearly 3 years, ever since they had 'rescued' him from the madman's cloning facility they had been training him, indeed all of the clones, in infiltration and assassination, using them to test new prototype weapons, and as he was the best he had been given all the best weapons.

Slowly he got out of bed and crept to the door, while it was locked he had smuggled the pieces to create a basic omni-tool over the past few months, the omni-tool was primitive but it easily over-rode the security protocols. Making sure he was in the shadows he sent the command to open the door. Like most doors it gave a fairly loud confirmation noise off as it opened, as expected, the guard a young human in his twenties, turned around reaching for his weapon, his eyes searching the darkness, slowly he inched forward, one hand holding his weapon the other blindly searching for the light switch. Before he could John struck, his right hand, John's weaker one, slithered around the guards mouth and the other held his shoulders, in a swift movement he pulled the guards head as violently as possible, John was rewarded with a violent crack as the guards neck snapped and the body slumped, laying it to the floor he methodically searched the guards and pulled out the man's weapons. John then hid the body underneath his bed and locked the door behind him.

Now that he was free, in the loosest possible sense of the term, he needed his armour and a map of the facility, the latter was mostly in his head, but the centre of the facility which handled the computer's and communication's and the southern parts which were administration, were complete blanks. As such he headed north, towards the armoury. Based on the facilities own clocks it was nearing the middle of the night, and thus very few people were around, still he knew that it would not be long before the alarm was raised maybe ten or fifteen minutes, even less time if he disabled the camera's as it would take too long and definitely cause an alarm to be raised, he couldn't even avoid the camera's as the hallways were brightly lit and the camera's covered the entire hallway

He made his way methodically across the facility, avoiding only the occasional guard. The Predator heavy pistol weighed a lot more than the Impala machine pistol he was used to, and he used both hands to grip it, still it was better than the Shuriken Machine Pistol, as sustained fire was much more likely to arouse suspicion.

After about ten minutes he had arrived at the armoury, incredibly no alarms had been raised, though it couldn't be more than a few minutes before they were. The armoury door was always guarded by two men, both clad in assassin light armour and carrying heavy pistols, he approached carefully, when he reached the corner that would bring him to the armoury doors, he plastered himself to the wall and took a quick look at the guards, from the way the one on the left was fiddling with his omni-tool he was deeply engrossed in something, though due to the helmet John couldn't tell where he was actually looking, the one on the right looked much more attentive, but was leaning against the wall in a way that made it seem like he was tired.

But it was nearly twenty metres from the junction to the door and about ten metres from the junction to a doorway, assuming it was open he would be killed before he made it five metres. So he had to come up with a distraction, he fiddled with the machine pistol until he removed the metal ammo block, and then threw it across the corridor, it landed with a loud thud and both guards jerked awake, the one on the right pulling out his heavy pistol and the guard on the left turning off his omni-tool, before turning to his partner.

"what do you think that was?" the other shrugged before gesturing down the hallway with his pistol

"nah, you go check it, it's probably the damn cat again, I keep telling the boss to get a lock on the cat flap"

"the 'damn cat' that made a noise like metal on metal, real damn cat-like" the guard on the left shrugged in response

"maybe he got it some upgrades, or maybe it pushed off something in a lab, what the fuck do I care? You're in charge, you go check it" despite the plainly joking nature of the comment, the guard on the right frowned when he mentioned a cat pushing something, he opened his mouth before sighing in defeat and walking down the corridor, painfully slowly John held his breath, counting the steps.

As soon as the guards foot came into view John reacted, sprinting at the man, he knocked him to the side before grabbing him and holding him as a human shield. To his credit the guard who had previously been fairly slow, reacted quite quickly, unfortunately he hadn't got a gun in his hand so John fired off a few quick shots at the guard hand and then a few at his chest, knocking him back against the wall, another few shots and he broke through the armour, John fired again and again until the man was slumped against the wall, blood pooling around him and dying the wall. He then held the Pistol against the other guards head, while walking towards the armoury door.

"what security measures are there?" the guard shook his head, silent, but his eyes betrayed his fear, John gave him a quick blow to the head and the guard started talking

"J...just the signal from my omni-tool and a password: 88691" John nodded and then bashed his pistol against the man's temple, who slumped almost immediately, controlling a sneer at how stupid these men were. He activated the man's omni-tool and pressed it against the metal control surface next to the door, which glowed green and presented a number pad, he then used the guards finger to input the code and was rewarded by a faint 'ting' and the door to the armoury slid open, John then lay the man down and fired a single round into his forehead, killing him quickly.

Inside the armoury was quite dark, even after he turned on the lights, equipment was piled high, but the things he was looking for were nowhere to be seen, eventually he came across a workshop and a computer, he opened it up and found a list of all equipment, serial numbers and use. At this point an alarm had to have been raised, visits to the armoury were strictly controlled and all visits were undoubtedly logged. So he worked fast, identifying the armour he had been using and the guns, an 'Impala' silenced and flash suppressed machine pistol, and 'Desolation' a custom built sniping rifle, designed to fire a 1.25mm armour piercing round, as the database proudly stated.

All of the items were easy to find, but several other items also caught his eye, like Menethenaline a knock-out drug designed for use against all species, with only a 6% fatality rate and several boxes of high explosives, as well as a box of multi-purpose, re-programmable, anti-personnel grenades. He also found the ID Tag, the 'Keys', to one of the supply freighters, that was evidently in the base, on one of the desks in the workshop.

Once he had gathered his supplies he methodically put on the infiltration armour and the weapons, for the moment he took with him seven of the grenades and about 5kg of high explosive, all hidden in the various pockets of his light armour, almost as soon as he had finished he heard shouts coming from outside the armoury, evidently the alarm had been raised, he slipped into one of the darker corners of the armoury and activated his cloaking device.

Said cloaking device was a prototype model, and essentially blocked all wavelengths of sound and light from within it's area of operation, but it would allow the wavelengths of light and sound from around the field to pass through as normal, not only was this incredibly difficult to achieve, it also caused several problems. For instance, while it would very effectively cloak the user it also left the user blind to anything outside the field as sound and light were blocked both ways by the field. Due to the fact that it was a prototype it was hooked up to a generator that generated far more energy than was necessary to keep the field running, so that scientists could test it's capabilities without waiting for it to recharge, as such it had an active uptime of around half an hour at a walking pace, and around five minutes sprinting, not that this was recommended.

As such John was very effectively hidden from the search team, even though one of the team shone a light in the corner, as soon as the man's back was turned, John took the opportunity to attack, he leapt down almost silently, landing about three feet from the man, as a compromise between seeing and being invisible the suit had an integrated heat camera, which while not very effective was useful for augmenting John's skills honed by being attacked blindfolded and deaf. He crept behind the man, grabbed the man's head and brought his knee to the back of the guards neck and pulled back, the man's neck snapped and John leapt away back into the dark, from there he knew he had to tap the guards comm channels, so he made his way over to the exit and took one of the dead guards omni-tools, as before he operated swiftly finding the channels and programming them into his suit, while it wouldn't work while he was cloaked he was confident he could outwit the idiots in the base long enough to get information.

So he went back into the armoury and took out several more of the grenades from the box filled with them, which as the database had stated were multi-purpose and made his way back to the exit, making sure not to engage the guards or raise their suspicion. Once there he programmed the grenades to be proximity mines and to only detonate after three people had passed and placed them around the door and the sole corridor leading to the door, after that he knocked over several pieces of equipment and locked the door behind him, making good his escape, as he ran, and just after feeling the slight tremors of the grenades going off he began searching the suits options, trying to find a gauge of how long the suits dedicated cloaking batteries had, completely by accident he wound up on a window about the cloaking settings and found something interesting, while the suit very effectively blocked all waves of energy, it was also giving out it's position via a physical connection, that it as his foot touched the metal floor the suit would give out its position, so it was no wonder the guards came as quickly as they did, a quick modification to the setting and the software had been shut-down, but the suit continued to give off its location, evidently the tracker was running on a completely separate system, so he started running, his only chance at this point would be to make it outside, or somewhere the tracker couldn't operate, either way he needed to get to the control room, down to the south of the facility.

As such he set off at a slow jog, trying to preserve the battery while being fast enough to avoid guards sent to intercept him, then it occurred to him, since it must be a physical connection if he wore something over his boots then the signal wouldn't be sent, if he wore something like the guards boots, he should be marginally safer. So he turned off the corridor he had been jogging down, he purposefully went back towards the centre of the facility, from what he remembered there had always been increased guard activity down this corridor so it was a fair bet that there would be some guards.

He was in luck, just twenty metres away were two guards, both looking alert, but if he moved fast enough it wouldn't matter. So he ran catching the first guard by surprise, a short burst of automatic fire ended him quickly, the other similarly dealt with, at that point he decloaked, all his training couldn't get rid of the problems associated with not being able to see an in-animate cold object, but he knew that he had attracted attention, several short in-decipherable sounds emanated from both guards radio's, his suit also relayed what was said

"warning, bio-signs down for units 802-A, 802-B. units 803-A, 803-B, 803-C, intercept and apprehend, code 1185" so he removed the guards boots and put them over his own, thankfully the guard had much bigger feet than him and the boots fitted comfortably over his own, but he was left with a problem, while the cloaking field was large enough that the boots were covered, they also nearly fell off when he ran, as John found to his dismay as he escaped the scene. running south, back towards the administration section, he needed to level the place, not only to remove the people who had kept him locked up for four years, but also to destroy the other pieces technology like what he had, as far as he knew they were unique to this outpost and he planned to keep it that way for as long as possible.

As he walked he checked his weapons, ensuring that no one had tampered with them, as the engineers often did to test the technology, thankfully both the machine pistol and the sniping rifle were in working order. As he came to the final junction he came face to face with about fifteen of the guards and automated turrets, as one the turrets turned to him, and despite all the amazing cloaking technology, opened fire.

**Firstly, to anyone who has put ****me**** on alert because of 'Bloodied Sun', I apologize I just got distracted with all the tech, ships etc. rest assured that I have not given up on it, mostly.**

**Secondly, this is not directly related to the ME games. I will expand on this prologue, but I wanted your feedback, so any reviews will be appreciated. I have the first part, set from 2180-2182/3, mostly planned out.**

**Other than that thanks for reading, again reviews will be greatly appreciated.**

**Blakdawn**


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